


I Would Not Give You False Hope

by ninhursag



Series: This Is Not How I Am [2]
Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: Abusive Jesse Manes, Being Lost, F/F, Family Reunions, Feelings, Gen, Home can be a person, M/M, Past Child Abuse, Past Domestic Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-08
Updated: 2019-09-08
Packaged: 2020-10-12 13:56:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,812
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20565467
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninhursag/pseuds/ninhursag
Summary: After more than twenty years of silence, Alex is ready to see his mother.This is a direct sequel to A Dream Lies Dead Here.---The last time Alex saw his mom, before everything changed, she kissed him on the forehead and waved him off to school. She smelled nice and her smile was always steady. Her hair tickled him, soft and dark. The feel of her arms around him was safe, warm. She hugged a little harder than normal but it felt good.





	I Would Not Give You False Hope

**Author's Note:**

> The issues reflected in the tags are implied other than one encounter. Not graphic but it's there.

The last time Alex saw his mom, before everything changed, she kissed him on the forehead and waved him off to school. She smelled nice and her smile was always steady. Her hair tickled him, soft and dark. The feel of her arms around him was safe, warm. She hugged a little harder than normal but it felt good.

She wasn't there when he came home, but her things still were, her clothes in the closet, her shoes by the door. Her computer equipment in the little office where he'd sat and watched her by monitor lights with his head buried in her lap. He was still there.

But she was gone. She never came back for any of it.

Dad said to forget about her, she was gone. They were divorcing and she wanted nothing to do with the kids, wanted nothing. Dad said worse than that. Alcoholic red bitch was the start of it.

And nothing was safe again, for a long time.

The first time in his adult life someone said her name to him he was twenty-one, in a specialist class on breaking through secured systems. 

"Manes, huh?" the instructor says. "Any relation?"

Alex was about to say something off hand about the airforce family tradition until he realized that the man was pointing at the white paper they were reading.

A Complexity Primer for Cybersecurity. Authors: Manes, Julia...

He stared. "She's my mom," he said and stared at the paper, as if he'd known his mother wrote things like that. Right. She'd had computers around all the time, he remembered watching the light of her rig when he woke up at night? And she smiled and kissed him on the forehead and muttered about sleep and stroked his hair.

"Your mom's a fucking God, Manes. You need to introduce us," the guy at the next desk hissed at him. Alex rolled his eyes. His hands shook.

"Yeah," Alex said, voice steadier than his hands. "Don't you wish."

The next time he saw her, in any way, it was on security footage he'd hacked from the Caulfield archives before the place blew. Old stuff but not ancient.

Her eyes were dark and wet and she was shaking her head. Arms wrapped around her own body as if to shield herself from her husband. Jesse was younger, stronger then. She was younger, terrified.

She was young, maybe they'd gotten married out of college? Alex didn't know.

"At least give me the baby," she begged on that pixelated screen with it's too bright colors. "He's still so little. Please let me take him. Jesse. If you ever loved--"

"I didn't. You aren't worth it, you're trash."

That tone, Alex knew that tone. You're trash, you're a pervert, you're nothing but what I made you. She didn't seem to hear it, glassy eyed. She wasn't focused on that.

"The baby," she repeated, her eyes were dark wet, "please, you'll never see us again." Him. Alex. Was the baby. 

And Dad smiled at her and shook his head. "If you try and take him, I'll have you fucking sectioned Julia. Valenti's my fucking fishing buddy, you think he's going to help you?"

"Sectioned for what?" Her head shook too, her hands shook.

"For going fucking nuts and killing your own kid. Do you want to know how you kill him, Julia?"

Alex hit stop on the playback and went to get a beer instead. He drank it and then, very calmly, walked over to the bathroom and puked it out, stomach rebelling. 

He was seventeen again, and his dad had enlistment papers in his hands and told him a story like that, about Michael about death.

Fucker's MO didn't change. Jesus. He needed a drink.

"I want my mom," he told Michael over morning coffee on a morning when he'd stayed over at the airstream even though he shouldn't have. Taken what he shouldn't and said what he shouldn't and then hated himself immediately. 

Was sitting here now, elbow to elbow with Michael, who was bleary and shirtless and beautiful. Not hating himself quite yet.

She wasn't dead. He could see her.

His mom. Michael's mom was dead after being tortured for decades.

"Ok," Michael said, like that was not bothering him. "Tell her your dad is taken care of and see what she says."

"It can't be that easy."

Michael shrugged. "Sometimes, it is. You never know unless you try."

"Well I guess you know her better than I do," Alex muttered and looked away.

Michael gave a noisy, breathy sigh. "That wasn't really up to me, was it?" He looked away, over Alex's head. "If you want to see her, then see her, Alex. She has a phone number and an address."

The next time he saw her for real wasn't long after. She did have a phone number and an address.

She didn't seem surprised. "You better come in, Alex," she said calmly, ushering him into a bright, airy house. He could smell food cooking, warm and homey.

Her hair had streaks of grey and her eyes had crow's feet. She looked nervous, wary, but not afraid. Not shaking in terror like she had been in the video. She had moved past all of that.

"It's um, been a while," he said, painfully obvious words that his voice cracked around.

She nodded. 

"Look," she said. Her eyes were open. She licked her lips. "I don't-- I'm not good at this. But. I built something for you. Come and see it."

He followed her through the soft, expensive looking house, past a kitchen with a surprised looking blonde woman he caught just a glimpse of. She looked expensive too.

To a room that reminded him viscerally of the old shuttered office in his father's house, all that '90's tech locked inside and left to rot. This room was warmer, framed posters on the wall and comfortable chairs. But it was her.

It was hers. 

What she'd built him was a program. A tool, beautifully designed, elegant code. A tool only someone who knew about alien languages would know to build.

"I started with source code primarily designed for machine translation," she said, not looking at him, but at the rig she had said up. It was beautiful looking equipment, his fingers itched to touch it. "It took years for me to do the testing. But-- you'll see--"

"I didn't even know you were an engineer until after I joined up," he said, wonderingly. "No one told me and I didn't ask."

She raised her eyebrows. "I didn't work in Roswell. Just some for fun stuff. Jesse- he--" she looked away.

"I'm sorry," he said, instinctively, like he always felt he had to when his father--

"No," she stopped him short with a quick shake of her head. "That one is on me, Alex. I made some shitty decisions, you and your brothers paid for them."

He had nothing to say. He didn't know what to say. He looked back at the screen.

The immaculate blonde walked into the room at some point later while they were talking code.

She-- his mother-- Mom looked startled, but smiled. "Alex, this is Belinda. Belinda, this is my. Um. My. My son." And her smile was beautiful.

And Belinda smiled too, gracious and sweet and offered her hand. "Thank you so much for coming out here, Alex. I'm so glad to meet you. Will you stay for dinner?"

"I--" he started, then looked at his mother. Her eyes were wide. Hopeful. He swallowed. It really was that easy, apparently, it had been all this time. "Yeah, ok."

He came back, after that, making the drive. Panic and MCR pounding too loud from the speaker, hands relentless on the steering wheel.

His leg hurt. His lack of leg hurt more.

He asked Michael to come with him and got a maybe next time kind of response. And that was its own thing he didn't want to touch.

Belinda was nice to him even when Mom wasn't in the room in a careful, hopeful way. She brought him tea, in a warm, lovely mug. The kind you bought in a fancy home goods store, like something Isobel Evans would and did own. "The first time I met your mother she was seventeen and beautiful. Too much makeup, punk rock jeans. She was like-- my mother once paid too much for a Bengal cat. An F1 cross. Feral."

"Sounds like someone I know," Alex said and laughed at himself a little. Maybe he meant Michael. 

Belinda smiled and then sighed. "It's not an excuse, but. He destroyed her," Belinda said. "For a long time."

Alex looked around again. This place, that smelled of money and safety and warmth and home. A place you could bring a child. Not ruins. Not the scrabbled remnants of a bombed out building. Not-- "Does she talk about me?" He asked.

Belinda's mouth twisted, pink and lipsticked. "No. Hunter comes by some years, on Christmas. And Flint calls. But you-- she's been working on projects for you for a long time. But she doesn't talk, no."

"She didn't tell me that. That she sees them," he said, level and calm.

"I can't speak for your mother, Alex," Belinda said, her voice gentle.

He took in a breath, let it out. "She has all this. You."

Belinda laughed. And she looked, in that moment, more like Michael than Isobel. Not her-- it was the spark in her eyes. Old, old old anger. "I built this place. I wanted to for years, before Manes, before... she finally agreed to move in."

"You love her."

Belinda just lifted her shoulders and laughed shortly. "I'm aware." 

Alex could hear his mother stopping in the doorway, he could hear everything, especially when it was around an exit, but he didn't look at her. 

"My father fucked up everything he touched," he said, not to her. That was the easy part to understand.

He ended up in Michael's bed again, showing up too late at night after a too long drive. Michael let him in, sleep wrecked, wearing sweatpants and ridiculous bedhead.

His leg hurt and his ears hurt and his throat was dry.

"This is fucked," he said. 

Michael rubbed his eyes and sighed. "What'd I do?" he mumbled. 

Alex flinched. Of course Michael thought that.

"Not you. Sorry, I didn't mean to... can I, um, come in?"

And Michael bit his lower lip, but moved aside to let Alex limp in. "Yeah, of course."

And so he did go in, into the airstream, and into Michael's too small bed, curled in close. 

"If I built you a house, would you live in it?" Alex whispered, half asleep and warm, what felt like hours later. There was quiet, just Michael's soft, rumbling snores, but that was ok.

**Author's Note:**

> I appreciate and adore feedback of all kinds!
> 
> Please come and talk about feelings with me haha.
> 
> You can also find me as ninhursag at dreamwidth https://ninhursag.dreamwidth.org/ or ninswhimsy on Tumblr


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